End of Day 17 Beaufort NC USA towards Guernsey

This Blog entry is an edited version of the message we intended to send back whilst we were on the passage.  Unfortunately the laptop we use to work with the modem connected to the HF/SSB radio failed on 13 June so we had no way of sending it at the time it was written.

2359hrs (N, GMT -1) Sun 14 Jun 2020

Dear All,

We trundled slowly east during the small hours.  BV could have carried more sail but we both felt that we had missed out on sleep during the past couple of rough days so we kept the sail plan conservative.  As a result, BV’s movement was much more settled for the crew sleeping off watch.

… which was very atmospheric

That lasted until I handed over to Nicky at 4am, just before dawn.  The wind had started to drop and the sea had settled nicely so she took over with BV flying full sails to keep our speed up.

… which was very atmospheric

The view was not quite so atmospheric when I came back on watch at 0800hrs.  A fairly grey day and a grey sea!  I completed the log entries whilst Nicky conjured up a steaming bowl of hot muesli for breakfast which we ate sitting in the cockpit wearing layers of fleeces and woolly hats.  The influence of the 14 degrees Celsius seat temperature is keeping the air temperature at about that level and neither of us has really adjusted to that temperature change yet.

The saloon full of the kit emptied out of the wet locker to get access to the generator.  Nicky asleep in the bunk – she managed to sleep through the entire job!

Looking through the wet hanging locker and into the
 machinery space.  The scuba tank filling compressor
 is the blue thing and the grey coloured generator
(without its soundproofing covers on) is up and
partially hidden to the left

Whilst Nicky was off watch in the morning the sea was the smoothest it has been for days so I took the opportunity to do a routine check on the generator.  That’s not easily done in rough weather because most of the contents of the wet locker and a couple of things stored in the machinery space have to be emptied out into the saloon so that I can crawl through into the machinery space to add oil and generally check all is well.  Since we have lost the battery charging from the DuoGen we have been running the generator twice a day to keep the batteries topped up, heat a tank of hot water, and run the watermaker to keep the water tanks full. The watermaker and the water heater on their own each use pretty much all of the power that our little generator produces so we’ve been working it quite hard over the last 17 days.  Hopefully the addition of a little oil will keep it happy and running well for the rest of the passage.

At midday we made another time zone hour change so we are now working on N time which is GMT-1 hour.  Somehow changing the clocks as we cross time zones seems to be the one action that most makes it feel that we are getting closer to home, otherwise we could almost be sailing nowhere on our constant saucer of sea.

Nicky’s cunning use of the jockey pole to get a better angle on the preventer to stop the mainsail slatting

From 1700hrs we really started to slow down as the wind dropped off to 8-9 knots.  There was just enough wind to sail but the mainsail was flopping about so Nicky came up with an ingenious use for the jockey pole to run the preventer at a better angle so that it kept the boom out.  That meant that we were able to keep sailing all afternoon at just over 4 knots.

A much better result than my last loaf

Finally, after a slow day of sailing I can also report that the bread making was also slow but the product is back on form.  With the cool temperature it took all day to get a decent rise but the result looks much better than my last attempt.

Love to all,

Reg and Nicky

Passage statistics:

Position at midday 14 Jun: N46 19 W033 05

Position at midnight 14 Jun: N46 24 W031 46

Midday to midday distance through water: 159 nautical miles (average 6.6 knots).

Midday to midday GPS distance towards destination: 128 nautical miles

Midnight to midnight distance through water (23hrs due to time zone change): 134 nautical miles (average 5.8 knots)

Midnight to midnight GPS distance towards destination (23hrs due to time zone change): 120 nautical miles

Total miles covered through water:  2677 nautical miles

Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Guernsey): 1239 nautical miles

End of Day 17 Beaufort, North Carolina, USA towards Guernsey